When the legal preparations for the trial were ended the prisoners of the Temple were permitted to communicate with each other, and, viewing their fate with that indifference which youth, misfortune, and courage inspired, they amused themselves with some of those games which usually serve for boyish recreation.  While they were thus engaged the order arrived for their removal to the Conciergerie.  The firmness of all remained unshaken, and they made their preparations for departure as if they were going about any ordinary business.  This fortitude was particularly remarkable in Georges, in whose manner a change had taken place which was remarked by all his companions in misfortune.

For some time past the agents of Government throughout France had been instructed to solicit the First Consul to grant for the people what the people did not want, but what Bonaparte wished to take while he appeared to yield to the general will, namely, unlimited sovereign authority, free from any subterfuge of denomination.  The opportunity of the great conspiracy just discovered, and in which Bonaparte had not incurred a moment’s danger, as he did at the time of the infernal machine, was not suffered to escape; that opportunity was, on the contrary, eagerly seized by the authorities of every rank, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, and a torrent of addresses, congratulations, and thanksgivings inundated the Tuileries.  Most of the authors of these addressee did not confine themselves to mere congratulations; they entreated Bonaparte to consolidate his work, the true meaning of which was that it was time he should make himself Emperor and establish hereditary succession.  Those who on other occasions had shown an officious readiness to execute Bonaparte’s commands did not now fear to risk his displeasure by opposing the opinion he had expressed in the Council of State on the discussion of the question of the Consulate for life.  Bonaparte then said, “Hereditary succession is absurd.  It is irreconcilable with the principle of the sovereignty of the people, and impossible in France.”

In this scene of the grand drama Bonaparte played his part with his accustomed talent, keeping himself in the background and leaving to others the task of preparing the catastrophe.  The Senate, who took the lead in the way of insinuation, did not fail, while congratulating the First Consul on his escape from the plots of foreigners, or, as they were officially styled, the daggers of England, to conjure him not to delay the completion of his work.  Six days after the death of the Due d’Enghien the Senate first expressed this wish.  Either because Bonaparte began to repent of a useless crime, and felt the ill effect it must produce on the public mind, or because he found the language of the Senate somewhat vague, he left the address nearly a month unanswered, and then only replied by the request that the intention of the address might be more completely expressed.